


Sunset

by JacarandaBanyan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Picnics, Polyamory, Prompt Fill, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, SHIELD being underhanded, So of Course Everyone's Worried, Tony Doesn't Communicate Effectively, Tony Doesn't Want Anybody to Worry, Tony Stark Bingo 2018, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Using Food as a Substitute for Communication, Worried Bucky Barnes, Worried Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 01:14:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14884826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: Steve and Bucky think that Tony is feeling insecure about their relationship, and try to reassure him, but he refuses to open up to them. Instead, he spends his time working on some mysterious project.





	Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill for Tony Stark Bingo, K1 square, "sunrise/sunset."

Some deep, primitive part of Steve’s brain noted Tony’s sudden absence from their shared bed and set off alarm bells. Slowly he began to gain consciousness, panic mounting as more and more parts of his brain woke up and confirmed that although he’d gone to bed with Tony in his arms, his arms were now empty. His searching reaches became more agitated and his subconscious grew more upset until at last he exploded awake and sat bolt upright. 

Tony was gone.

A metal hand on his shoulder stopped him from leaping out of bed. 

“He left about an hour ago. Headed down to the workshop.”

Steve frowned. “Any idea why?”

“Not a clue. Wanted to work on something, I guess? He just sat bolt upright, mumbling about carbon dioxide levels in that statistical jargon of his, then got up and headed down to the lab. He still had that crusty stuff in the corners of his eyes, too, didn’t even bother wiping it away. It was like he was sleepwalking. I thought about following him, but I know you don’t like waking up alone.”

“Should we go after him?”

Bucky tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. A little voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like Tony reminded him that the gesture was silly, but he ignored it. It didn’t feel right to address someone without looking at them. Rude, even.

“Hey JARVIS, what do you think? Should we head down there? Would Tony appreciate the company?”

“Sir has not indicated a need for privacy.”

Steve began disentangling himself from the sheets.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Tony was listening intently to something when they reached the workshop. It wasn’t immediately clear what exactly it was until they stepped inside, quietly so as not to break his focus on whatever it was.

It was his voicemail. Pepper's voice filtered through the speakers, abruptly replacing whoever had been speaking before.

"Tony, I get that you have this... thing with them. I really do. But you need to stop hiding them away like this, it’s getting ridiculous. You need to be an adult about this. Just… don’t go hide in your workshop for a week, okay? You have people who’ve got your back. Talk to us. Talk to  _ me _ . Please.”

Pepper’s voice gives way to Fury’s.

“Stark, you can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Don’t make us do this the hard way. It won’t be enjoyable for anyone.”

Phil’s voice came up next.

“Tony. We get that you want to keep both, but you have to do what’s best for them. Let the Captain and Sergeant Barnes go. They deserve to make their own choices, not suffer you forcing yourself on them. You’re pulling people into this that didn’t need to be involved. I just heard Pepper calling you about this. It didn’t sound like she was getting through to you either. You would do well to listen to her advice.” Phil’s voice paused. “And don’t think I won’t use official channels to get to you. You know me better than that.”

An unknown man’s voice took over next. According to the caller ID displayed on the hologram, it was a SHIELD employee.

“Hello, Tony Stark. You have failed to respond to an official SHIElD request. Please contact Phil Coulson as soon as possible. Your failure to comply has been noted, and will be recorded.”

Steve’s eyes darted back and forth between Tony, who was mechanically typing on a holographic keyboard and deleting his messages as he finished listening to them, and Bucky, who had gone increasingly still at his side as the voice mails made it increasingly clear that something was horrifyingly wrong. He recognized those phrases from back when they’d first gotten together.  _ “What’s best for them.” “Let Captain America and Sergeant Barnes go.” “It’s getting ridiculous.” _

This was bad. Tony had joked about the public reaction to the three of them getting together, but Steve had been sure it was just jokes, nothing more. Damn it, Tony had  _ assured _ them that, quote, “No talking head who refuses to accept anything that doesn’t mesh neatly with their narrow, warped vision of reality or rando on Twitter who wishes he was as lucky as me can possibly hurt me right now. I’m dating the two hottest men on SHIELD’s payroll and they’re not. Clearly I’m winning here.”

And Steve had thought that was the end of it. After a while the whole scandal had blown over and the reporters that ambushed them post-battle stopped asking questions about his sexuality and Tony’s suitability as a significant other. Most of the internet moved on to other things. Things were supposed to be easy now.

But that wasn’t the picture those voice mails painted. And Tony sure wasn’t laughing now.

Because this was different, wasn’t it? This wasn’t some stranger on TV, these were people Tony knew. He wouldn’t have thought Pepper of all people would have done this. She always seemed so professional. Too professional to tell Tony that a stable romantic relationship was ‘getting ridiculous,’ for sure. 

Clearly he and Bucky needed to do some damage control. 

* * *

The two of them retreated to the kitchen and and started grabbing random ingredients and utensils. Normally when things started going south for Tony, they would make him something to eat, but neither of them had any clue what to make to cheer him up after being harrassed various personal acquaintances in the dead of night.

“I can’t believe Coulson would stoop to this. He never acted like it was a problem when we first got together,” Bucky gritted out as he fished some plastic bowls out of a cabinet. His arm plates flexed unnecessarily. They did that sometimes when he was frustrated and consciously controlling himself.

“Maybe he didn’t want to make a scene in front of us,” Steve replied as he searched the fridge for a likely looking ingredient. Eggs, those were good. You could do lots of stuff with eggs. He grabbed them with a bit more force than necessary and set them down on the counter. 

“You’re right, he did have that hero-worship thing going with you, didn’t he? Christ, I didn’t realize-”

“Neither of us did.” 

Bucky’s plates flexed some more, and he started rooting through one of the lower cabinets where they kept the chocolate.

Steve picked up Bucky’s bowl like he was going to crack the eggs into it, then thought better of it. Maybe not eggs. Tony got enough protein as it was. He needed fruits and vegetables. He put the eggs back in the fridge and opened the drawer full of vegetables.

“I was more surprised by Pepper,” he said. Maybe kale? That was supposed to be good for you, right? 

“Maybe this was why he did the thing with the flowers,” Bucky said. He looked like he was trying to round up every measuring cup and spoon that Tony owned. Good plan, they’d probably need to measure something. Cooking involved lots of measuring. “He always did like proving his own point with big, over-the-top gestures, right? What’s a bigger romantic gesture than ten thousand roses?”

Steve looked up from his staring match with the kale and flashed back to Tony's ill-fated romantic surprise of thousands and thousands of roses a few weeks ago. They were still finding dried-up rose petals under the pillows and behind the dresser.

“I thought that was just Tony being Tony, but what if you’re right? What if he’s been trying to…  _ prove _ something to everyone this whole time?” That thought made a slimy, cold weight settle in his stomach. He forcibly turned his attention back to the kale. Healthy though it may be, he knew Tony wasn’t a fan of the taste. Maybe if he disguised it? Made it a smaller part of some other dish? Oh, he could cut it up and add it to scrambled eggs. He turned and retrieved the eggs again.

“We need to fix this, Stevie.”

“Agreed.”

“What do you need to fix?”

They whipped around to face Tony. He looked a little tired, but otherwise normal. Not at all like he’d just been subjected to vaguely threatening lectures about his relationship from people he should have been able to count on. 

“Food, honey,” Bucky said.  _ Nice save _ , Steve thought. “Just working on fixing something up for our fella, aren’t we Stevie?”

He nodded. “Real sweetheart, you should meet him sometime. A real ten, a perfect boyfriend who we’d never want to lose. Can’t let him starve, now can we?” The words sounded a touch too serious to his own ears, but Tony didn’t see to have noticed.

“Is that so? Sounds to me like a lucky man to have you two looking after him.” He crossed the kitchen and kissed first Bucky then Steve lightly on the cheek. The little hairs of his goatee rubbed against the side of his nose, making him scrunch it up a bit. Bucky snickered and dove in to kiss the same spot on the other side of his nose until Steve had to pull away to sneeze. 

Tony laughed and swatted Bucky, then went back nuzzling Steve. Steve wrapped his arms around him and pulled him flush up against his chest. 

“So just to be clear,” Tony whispered, “you’re making food that requires kale, eggs, chocolate, and every measuring cup in the Tower at three o’clock in the morning?” His eyes were laughing, and Steve had to work not to laugh in reply.

“It’s not all for the same dish, right Stevie?” Bucky answered. “Steve’s making you a healthy and nutritious breakfast so you won’t try and substitute coffee for food, and I’m making a treat that you’ll get to taste if you’re careful and don’t hurt yourself in the lab today.”

_ Nice save, _ Steve thought, but when Tony glanced at him he nodded along like that had always been the plan. 

“We woke up and you’d already gone and started the day, and we know you didn’t get yourself anything to eat. Go make yourself some coffee, then come sit down and talk to me while I make this.”

* * *

Over the next couple of days, both he and Bucky tried to get some sort of read on the situation, but Tony acted like nothing was wrong. He was spending an awful lot of time on some sort of mystery project down in the workshop, but he was keeping it hush-hush. Bucky had already tried bribing him with warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven blueberry-and-chocolate brownies, but even that tried and true method yielded nothing. Though admittedly, Steve thought that probably had less to do with Tony's ability to withstand food-based manipulation and more to do with how distracting it had been for Bucky to watch him eat the brownies. All that moaning, licking the warm chocolate off his fingers, that appreciative face as he thanked Bucky and ate another- Steve got distracted just remembering how Bucky recounted his failure. 

He himself had had slightly more success when he'd brought lunch down to the lab the other day while Bucky was at therapy. Tony had been just as reluctant to answer Steve's questions about his new project as all the other times they'd tried to get it out of him, but this time he'd caught sight of a couple of bent tabloid magazines in the wastebasket near the door. Tony had been too engrossed in his work to notice Steve picking them up on his way out after they'd polished off the last of the sandwiches Steve had made.

The magazines were all relatively recent. Not one dated to before they'd announced their relationship. Steve felt a weight start to grow in his stomach. 

As he'd feared, none of the stories were complimentary. What he hadn't expected were quotes from various SHIELD agents. Since when did SHIELD give statements to such low-class papers as this one?

He flashed back to the voicemails he and Bucky had overheard. Was this SHIELD's way of putting pressure on Tony? The thought made his pulse pound with anger. But Pepper's voicemail had been in there too, and she wasn't affiliated with SHIELD. Were they putting pressure on her too?

He was tempted to call Natasha and ask her, but she wasn't scheduled to be back from her latest mission yet, and he wasn't supposed to call her unless it was an emergency. Clint had retired, and Sam had made it very clear that while he was willing to take SHIELD agents as patients during working hours, he had no interest in becoming an agent. There was no one he could ask.

A few days after that he got an email from Fury asking when Steve was coming back to work. Steve wrote back that since Bucky was still in therapy, he wasn't planning on coming back just yet, but if things continued at their current pace he expected to be back around April. Bucky sat next to him on the bed as he typed the response out, looking up new recipes on his phone.

"I feel like I may as well just copy and paste from the original leave request. Why did I have to fill out all that paperwork on when I expected to come back if they're just going to hound me about it anyway?" He gripped. 

"Well, maybe they're just anxious to have you back," Bucky said without looking up from his search. "I know I'd want you back if I were them."

"Maybe."

Steve sent the email, then shut the computer and set it down on the bedside table under Tony's tablet.

"Maybe this is normal, and I'm just feeling short with them because of those voicemails and those trashy magazines."

Bucky shook his head. 

"No, this is SHIELD sticking their noses where they're not wanted. I saw Tony looking up 'great date ideas to keep the romance alive' today when I brought him lunch in the lab."

Steve put his head in his hands. 

"Damn it, SHIELD has to know Tony has confidence issues when it comes to relationships, that's just the sort of thing they'd put down in his file. They're trying to hit him where it hurts."

Bucky nodded miserably. 

"He just keeps working on that mystery project all day every day, but he won't tell me what it is. I'm afraid he's going to start doing that _isolating himself in the lab so he won't have to see things fall apart_ thing Pepper warned us about."

"I just want to tell him that everything's alright, that he's wonderful and perfect and nothing anyone else says would ever make us break up with him, but you can't just say stuff like that out of the blue, and he keeps acting like nothing's wrong whenever we go down there."

He leaned sideways so some of his weight was resting against Bucky's shoulder.

"What if that mystery project of his has something to do with this? What if he's trying to do something stupid like build a time machine so we can go back to the forties?" Bucky sighed. "What if all that time he's spending down there he's stewing in his own emotions instead of just saying something?

"I can't keep doing this, Stevie. We've got to do something to reassure him. But what can we do that won't freak him out any more than he already must be?"

"I don't know Stevie. I don't know."

* * *

 “Tony, where are we going?”

“Hush, you’ll see in a minute.  _ Don’t  _ take off the blindfold, Bucky, don’t think I don’t see you.”

Steve heard Bucky huff. “Well I wouldn’t have to if you’d give me a hand here. I can’t see where I’m going and you are a terrible guide, I’ve already walked into Steve at least twice.”

“I thought you super soldiers had enhanced senses or something, shouldn’t you need more than a little blindfold before you start falling all over each other? Besides, it’s only a little bit further before you can stop.”

Steve smiled and walked confidently forward. He wasn’t entirely sure where in the Tower they were anymore after getting out of the elevator, but if his boyfriend was leading them somewhere blindfolded and promising “Grade-A Romance,” then they probably weren’t going anywhere dangerous and Tony was pretty good at keeping them from walking into walls. Maybe he’d found something new to try out in the bedroom, or had found some creative way around Steve’s ‘if we can’t walk from one side of the room to the other then there are too many flowers’ rule. 

Then the floor disappeared beneath his feet and he pitched forward. Hard edges banged into his cheek, his ribs, his back before he finally skids to a halt on the floor. 

“Oops, forgot about the stairs, I mean, there’s only like five of them, are you okay honey? No, Bucky, stop moving, just a minute, I’ll be right there.”

Steve felt a hand on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Steve, I forgot to warn you about the stairs. Jesus, maybe the blindfold wasn’t such a great idea. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, “I’m fine. You might want to help Bucky down those, though.”

“Yeah, okay, sounds good.” Steve heaved himself up and adjusted his blindfold. This left him perfectly positioned to break his boyfriends’ fall when Bucky inevitably misstepped and dragged Tony down with him. 

“Okay, so maybe the blindfolds were overkill,” Tony grunted as he heaved himself off the ground.

“ _ Maybe _ ,” Bucky muttered in Steve’s ear as he picked himself up off of him. His flesh hand rubbed lightly over Steve’s back in apology, but since he couldn’t see what he was doing if felt a little bit aimless and disoriented. Steve didn’t mind.

He stood last, blindfold still firmly in place. “I think we can make whatever this is a dramatic reveal without the blindfolds, Tony, but if you insist we’ll keep them on.”

Tony audibly waffled for a few seconds before caving. 

“Fine, take them off.”

Steve heard Bucky rip his off with satisfaction. He was a little more careful taking his own off, but once he did he made a quick visual inventory of the room. Sure enough, they were still in the tower, but not on any of the floors he’d been on before. 

They were in some sort of large garage. The walls on either side soared up just high enough to contain the private jet parked neatly by the entrance. Light streamed in from outside, glinting off the windows. 

“Why do we need a plane, Tony?” He asked.

“Because it’s faster than swimming,” Tony answered as he pulled them aboard. “Now sit down while I cover these up…” He pulled the curtains over the windows. The cabin was plunged into darkness for a few seconds before the cabin lights came on. 

“And why would we need to swim?” Bucky asked with suspicious, squinted eyes.

“Because there’s a bit of ocean between New York and where we’re going. Hey Jarvis, I need you to play autopilot for today, can you do that for me? I already uploaded the coordinates, I just need you to get us there by 6:45 tonight. Not too much before, though.”

“Of course, Sir. Prepare for takeoff.”

“What the-” 

Bucky reached over to lift up the curtain Tony had placed over the window and peek outside, but Steve slapped his hand away.  _ Let Tony have his fun, _ he mouthed. Bucky rolled his eyes, but sat back down and pointedly looked away from the windows.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” Tony muttered as he fiddled with the controls. “I’ve worked on this plane myself, so it’s way faster than anything else on the market, but we’ve still probably got at least an hour before we land.”

“And there’s no chance that you’ll just tell us?”

“None at all.”

* * *

The plane eventually landed, and after consulting a bunch of different measurements and repeatedly asking Jarvis about various meteorological updates, Tony finally let them disembark the plane.

They had landed by the sea, and the shoreline curved away from them on either side. The surf crashed into the beach loudly enough to drown out any bird calls that weren’t the shrill shreeks of seagulls. The sun sat low enough in the sky that it had begun to color the clouds and the water in sunset orange, red, pink and purple. If Steve had to guess, he’d say they were on a small island.

Tony pulled a blanket from somewhere in the back of the plane and started spreading it out on the grass. When Steve turned to look at him, he noticed for the first time a little house set a little ways away from the beach. It was the only one, as far as he could see, but a clump of trees grew up pretty close behind the house, and there could be more buildings on the other side. 

“So,” Bucky drawled, “You gonna let us in on what this surprise is? I’m not sure where exactly I’m supposed to be looking.” He set his metal arm on Tony’s back, and adjusted it absentmindedly so that while Tony moved back and forth pulling blankets and food out of the plane, Bucky’s fingers were always touching some part of his back. 

“Oh! Right, right,” Tony blinked and plopped down in the pile of blankets he’d half-set up. 

“So, remember a few nights ago, when I got up at like two o’clock in the morning and you two made me chocolate and scrambled eggs that had so much kale in them they turned out green?”

Steve felt himself tense up, and tried to signal Bucky with his eyes over Tony’s shoulder without Tony noticing. That would have been the night they heard Tony listening to those voicemails about the two of them.

“Well,” Tony continued, “The reason I woke up was because I had this idea, it literally came to me in a dream if you can believe it, I had this idea to gather up a whole bunch of data on sunsets, make a predictive model out of it, and use that model to predict where the best sunset in the world would be. Once I knew where the best sunset would be, I’d surprise you too with a picnic and a sunset and no need to worry about reporters or lookie-lous watching our every step.”

Well, that would explain the muttering about meteorological stuff, Steve supposed, but why had he been listening to those voicemails while working on a project like this?

Bucky ruffled Tony’s hair and kissed the top of his head. 

“Thank you. We love it.” He dropped his metal arm under Tony’s bent legs and heaved him up into the air in a bridal carry so he could reach his face, then butterfly-kissed his way around the circumference of Tony’s face. 

“We always happy when you take some time for fun projects,” Steve added. 

While Bucky had Tony distracted, he started fixing the blanket heap into flat, adjacent sitting-blankets and a loose, open nest of the fuzzier shoulder blankets. Most of the food Tony had elected to bring was snack-type food: little chocolate things, fruit, little tupperware containers full of trail mix, some yogurt, stuff like that. Maybe when Bucky was done hogging their boyfriend, he could try and get Tony in his lap so he could hand-feed him.

“How long are we staying here for?” He asked absently when Bucky finally let Tony back down.

“Oh, a few days,” Tony hedged. 

“The best sunset in the world is going to be right here for a few days? That’s lucky.” Bucky commented. Steve thought he heard a note of suspicion in there, but it was so deeply hidden under everything else that it might as well have not been there.

“No, just tonight. Do you have any idea how often the best sunsets are, like, in the middle of the ocean, or over a war-torn country, or in someplace that doesn’t like foreigners, like Wakanda? I swear to god, the best sunset in the world was in Wakanda for like a week straight, how does that even happen? This was the first night it was somewhere I could actually bring you.” 

He popped open a tub of blueberries and offered one to Bucky. Bucky leaned over and ate it right out of his hand and kissed his fingertips. Tony laughed and leaned back so he was resting against Steve’s thigh. He smiled and offered him some chocolate.

“Tomorrow’s best is in Wakanda again, but the day after that is on the next island over, so if you want and if there’s no cloud cover we can head over there to see it. I only have property on this island, not any of the others, and there aren’t many places to rent, but there’s a boston whaler down on the docks that we can sit in. It might even have a built in cooler, I can’t remember. After that there’s like two weeks where all the best ones are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

Steve hummed and offered Tony some more chocolate.

“Well, even if I’m not sure why we’re here for a few days to see the sunset that will only be here tonight, I love your surprise Tony. You deserve a break, so we might even be able to convince you to take it easy while we’re here, huh?”

Tony stilled, then laughed weakly. 

“Yeah, huh, about that. There is a second reason why I dragged you both out here.”

Steve mind immediately flashed back to the voicemails.

“You see, I’ve kind of been monopolizing your time, and there are some people that don’t really like that, including your employers. So when Bucky said he wasn’t going to be signing up to become a SHIELD agent post recovery, they weren’t very happy. There’s a lot of people who are pretty sure I’ve got you trapped up in my tower like Rapunzel or something which, no, your hair isn’t nearly long enough for that.” Tony punctuated his rambling with a few strokes through Bucky’s hair. 

“Well, they got even madder when Steve asked for a sabbatical to help you work through all that HYDRA nastiness. But you put in the request, Steve, and Captain America still has some pull, so they mostly just grumbled to themselves. But these past few weeks have been, well. Irritating, let’s say, for them. What with all the press releases on us getting together, the going out together, the pictures people were taking of us that time we all went out for ice cream-”

“They’re mad at us for going outside? See, this is why I turned down their employment pitch.” Bucky interrupted.

Tony laughed. “Yeah, it seems that way to us, but to them it looks like you’re all better and we’re just milking Steve’s sabbatical and your trama so the three of us don’t have to go back to work. I’ve tried telling them that I’m trying to cut down on my commitments, but they just don’t want to hear that being the head of R&D at Stark Industries is plenty to keep me busy. I’ve had some pretty epic arguments, actually, which basically boiled down to me reminding them exactly who the Iron Man suit belongs to.

“Anyway, long story short, Fury might have said he was sending some agents to come get you guys and bring you over to SHIELD to remind you what was important or something, so I made the executive decision to kidnap the two of you. Consider yourselves kidnapped. You’re trapped here on this highly defended island that SHIELD doesn’t know I own until it’s safe to go back.”

He looked meaningfully first at Bucky, then at Steve. 

"I didn't want you guys to worry, so I ended up keeping it to myself. That's why I didn't tell you until now. I know, I know, honesty and communication and all that other stuff Bucky's therapist is always talking about is important, and I shouldn't have kept you in the dark, but I didn't want you to worry."

Steve looked at Bucky, whose own barely restrained chuckles were a mirror of his own. Their faces twisted and contorted with the effort of not laughing, but after only a few seconds they folded and collapsed on the blankets laughing.

"What?" Tony demanded. "What's so funny?"

Steve reached up blindly and felt for Tony’s shoulder as he convulsed with giggles. When he found it, he squeezed it.

“Okay Tony. Congratulations on kidnapping not one but two super soldiers. I feel very kidnapped right now. I am so surprised. Neither of us had any clue that anything was wrong or that SHIELD was doing anything. Is this Stockholm Syndrome, Bucky?”

"Yep, we were totally unaware of any issues. The whole situation went right over our head."

Tony sighed. "Come on you two, let me in on the joke."

" _We were **so** worried_ ," Steve managed between laughs. "We thought you were feeling insecure and just weren't telling us, so we kept trying to cheer you up, but this whole time you were planning a big date for us and giving SHIELD the finger." He heaved himself up onto his knees and pressed a kiss to Tony's wrinkled forehead.

"Thank you for kidnapping us, sweetheart. Next time, just talk to us, okay?"

Tony's face softened, and he leaned into Steve's side and threw a blanket around their shoulders.

Over the ocean, the sun began to set.


End file.
